Theme Review Update for June 30, 2014

Currently

  • 87 new tickets are waiting for review.
    • 6 tickets are older than 2 weeks
    • 37 tickets are older than 1 week
    • 59 tickets are older than 3 days
  • 82 tickets are assigned to 41 reviewers.
    • 73 tickets are older than 2 weeks
    • 76 tickets are older than 1 week
    • 81 tickets are older than 3 days

In the past 7 days

  • 111 tickets were opened
  • 109 tickets were closed:
    • 68 tickets were made live.
      • 17 new Themes were made live.
      • 51 Theme updates were made live.
      • 36 more were approved but are waiting to be made live.
    • 39 tickets were not-approved.
    • 2 tickets were closed-newer-version-uploaded.

#themes, #trt

Plugins Team Update for June 26, 2014

Repository stats for the last week:

Plugins requested : 168
Plugins rejected : 28
Plugins closed : 15
Plugins approved : 138

115 plugins in the queue, 85 without a reply and 15 older than a week.

4610 commits to the repo (934771-939381).

Support: 19 open tickets, with 4 older than a week.

#plugins

Support Team Update for June 26th

Items discussed at today’s #wordpress-sfd meetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area..

IRC escalation

@Clorith brought up the point that sometimes the #wordpress IRC channel gets beset by spambots. If someone is around who can deal with that then it’s not a problem. When the channel IRC mods are not available it can become distracting.

Except for pinging the wp-forums list or sending an email to IRC mods then there’s really not much to be done at this time. Forum moderators and IRC members with OP privileges are two separate groups. Using email is not ideal but a 4 hour later response time is better than no response at all.

Cleaning up the no replies link?

@jnhghy brought up the idea of making changes to the forum no replies view.

The problem with filtering that view is that those old replies from way, way, way back still have no replies to them. The conversation talked about the difference between a topic that is marked as [closed] and an unmarked topic that is more than a year old. Those topics are expired and cannot take anymore replies. They are closed too.

It may be possible to trim that view (pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party topics was recently removed from that view) but for now old topics will remain.

The Troubleshooting Handbook Status

@jerrysarcastic wasn’t able to attend today (and neither was I for that matter) but the new handbook was discussed.

The Support Handbook is for moderators and “crazy people like us”. But for regular users who wish to jump into support the Troubleshooting Handbook is meant to be the place to go. Eventually when people want to get started they will be directed to this new handbook.

There was some discussion regarding what kind of uploads are permitted (for example zips are not allowed) and what the current state is.

Content is still needed and anyone who wishes to contribute will be encouraged. 😉

The transcript of today’s meetup can be read at this link.

#support

Theme Review Update for June 23, 2014

Currently

  • 88 new tickets are waiting for review.
    • 9 tickets are older than 2 weeks
    • 47 tickets are older than 1 week
    • 71 tickets are older than 3 days
  • 69 tickets are assigned to 31 reviewers.
    • 64 tickets are older than 2 weeks
    • 66 tickets are older than 1 week
    • 69 tickets are older than 3 days

In the past 7 days

  • 126 tickets were opened
  • 138 tickets were closed:
    • 106 tickets were made live.
      • 6 new Themes were made live.
      • 100 Theme updates were made live.
      • 32 more were approved but are waiting to be made live.
    • 30 tickets were not-approved.
    • 2 tickets were closed-newer-version-uploaded.

#themes, #trt

Docs Team Update: June 19, 2014

The following is a summary of the topics discussed during our weekly Docs chat:

1. DevHub: @samuelsidler said Post2Posts still needs to be implemented with the parser. @coffee2code has implemented source code on the individual pages, and is working on implementing the examples functionality. The handbook pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party has been updated with the required changes.

2. Handbooks: Some progress was made this week, mostly in the Plugin Developer handbook. @blobaugh and @sewmyheadon will add the anticipated new permalinks for each page to the spreadsheets for their respective handbooks. Once that is done, @samuelsidler plans to manually migrate over completed handbook pages, one section at a time, to their permanent home on developer.wordpress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/. Adjustments will be made to the handbook theme and plugin, as needed, during content migrationMigration Moving the code, database and media files for a website site from one server to another. Most typically done when changing hosting companies.. Contributor information is being gathered, and will be included on the Credits page in each handbook.

3. Docs Issue Tracker: Development has stagnated on the project, and there most likely isn’t any developer time available right now. I’ll be going through the alpha release post comments, and creating TracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. tickets for suggested changes so the discussion can continue on the tickets.

4. Trac Tickets: @DrewAPicture brought up a new ticket that could be an interesting cross-team effort between CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress., Support, and Docs: #28551 – Add Better Debugging Documentation Into wp-config.php. In addition to providing more debug constants and documentation, the current user sections of the file can be improved with better inline documentation.

The chat logs are available here.

#docs

Plugins team update for June 19, 2014

Repository stats for the last week:

Plugins requested : 190
Plugins rejected : 28
Plugins closed : 17
Plugins approved : 138

94 items in the queue, 64 without a response and 7 older than a week.

4739 commits to the repo (930715-935454)

PluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party author support: 51 open tickets, with 5 older than a week.

#plugins

Accessibility Team Update: June 18, 2014

Visual Focus In Left Navigation

Screenshot of admin left navigation showing Posts menu selected with New Post submenu selected

Posts menu selected with indistinguishable darker black shading, Add New sub menu item selected with text in dark blue. Note that dark blue text against dark gray is hard to see.

Color Alone

Visual focus indicators for wayfinding are relied on heavily by some keyboard-only users. @helen notes the enhanced visual focus indicators now in trunk. Ticket #28267 needs a lot more work bringing the focus style to various places but one area that needs a smart solution is left navigation. Now we are relying on color changes which are, in some instances, too subtle. Indeed, color is not to be used as the only visual means of conveying information, indicating an action, prompting a response, or distinguishing a visual element.

Suggestions

We discussed this for most of the meeting and here are some suggestions.

  • Helen reports that a blue glow does not look good
  • White outline around menu item with white outline also around selected submenu item
  • Reversing the colors with another undefined indicator element
  • Triangle to the left of main menu item and selected submenu item
  • Underline under main menu item and selected submenu item (might be mistaken for links)

Solution Needed

We need some suggestions for an elegant solution. Bear in mind that there are eight admin color schemes and any solution should take that into account. I have created ticket #28599 to work on this issue. A WordPress AccessibilityAccessibility Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility) Team shirt to the person who comes up with the adopted solution!

Support Team Update for June 19th

I was unable to attend today’s #wordpress-sfd meetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. but there was good representation and a lot was covered. Mika wrote a really good amount of material and sent it to the wp-forums list. I also wanted to thank @Ipstenu for driving the meetup but it’s really more than that.

Mika? You’re fantastic and inspiring. Some days volunteer work (any work) can be a drag so if that happens just read this: Thank you for everything you do. It’s really appreciated. 😉

The Troubleshooting Handbook

Much of the Break/Fix site is now imported into the Troubleshooting Hanbdbook

Troubleshooting Handbook

This is a work in progress please feel free to volunteer content. This remains a great idea.

Sock Puppetry

Sock Puppetry is when one person (or company) makes duplicate accounts to either troll others or bump their own pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party or theme. It’s not cool and those new accounts get blocked when found and their posts deleted.

When a moderator comes across that and it’s related to a plugin author then please notify the plugin team at plugin [at] wordpress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ with the details. If a theme author is doing that then I think you can pingPing The act of sending a very small amount of data to an end point. Ping is used in computer science to illicit a response from a target server to test it’s connection. Ping is also a term used by Slack users to @ someone or send them a direct message (DM). Users might say something along the lines of “Ping me when the meeting starts.” the theme reviewers list.

I don’t think I’ve come across a theme author engaging in sock puppetry myself. You can always notify the wp-forums list if you’re not sure.

How to Pick Moderators and some Handbook Cleanup

Mika wrote a good and lengthy email to the wp-forums list and I’m going to include that here in today’s update.

Since this DOES get asked now and then, we banged around an idea to not so much formalize the process, but explain what’s going on.

That said, before I get to the new thing I’d like to add, I’ve fixed the structure of the handbook so we have forum moderation under the ‘Contributing to the WP Forums’ section. I also cleaned up a lot of the stuff that was in the “I …” format, since that was from my emails ages ago, and needed updating. I also consolidated some pages and added a couple new ones.

NEW PAGES:

https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/faq/
https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/contributing-to-the-wordpress-forums/
https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/other-support-locations/

EDITED PAGES:

https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/contributing-to-the-wordpress-forums/forum-moderator/

Added: Rule 6: You’re here to help people, not preach about right and wrong.

https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/contributing-to-the-wordpress-forums/forum-moderator/administration-overview/

Added: We have guidelines, not rules, for a reason: guidelines should be followed, rules <em>must</em> be followed. Never let the literalness of the guideline override your common sense. After all, we’re here to help people, not build a wall to keep people out.

https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/contributing-to-the-wordpress-forums/forum-moderator/bbpress-basics/

Added a reminder: We don’t like to call it bozing in public (even on this list) becuase it’s 99.99999% of the time taken the worst way possible. Try to call it b-tagging, and never ever EVER tell them they were bozo’d, tell them their account was set to require moderator approval on posts.

PROPOSED EDIT:

https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/contributing-to-the-wordpress-forums/

Forum Moderator:

If you’re interested in being a forum moderator, that’s awesome! We don’t have a formalized process for getting new mods, but here’s how we handle it:

We’re a team. We pick people we feel will work well with the current members, uphold the high level of support and friendliness of the forums, contribute with no adverse ulterior motive, and be a polite member of the forums in the face of raging anger.

What do we mean by ‘adverse ulterior motive’? It’s actually pretty simple.

  • Contributing to the forums to help people while learning more about WordPress is good.
  • Posting replies only to get people to use your plugin/service/product is NOT good.
  • Using your moderator powers to determine a poster is hosted by your company, and asking them to contact you/your company is good.
  • Using your moderator powers to get a poster’s email address to contact THEM about your product/service is NOT good.
  • Asking to be a mod because you’ve been tagging posts for spam cleanup, email/personal information/passwords removal, and make sticky posts for major issues is good.
  • Asking to be a mod because it will make you contribute more is NOT good.

If you can’t tell, the idea here is to do good for the sake of doing good. It’s not that we’re looking for people who have no higher aspirations, it’s that the aspiration we’re looking for is very self evident when it exists. And certainly you don’t have to be altruistic about WordPress to be a moderator. Some of us are encouraged by our companies to volunteer, in order to help the community. But that’s really the point. We’re looking for people whose goal matches ours: Make WordPress better for everyone.

Not being asked doesn’t mean you lack those qualities, however, nor does it mean we feel you’re a bad person. There is no magical combination of actions to be picked as a mod, and many people, even those who ask about being one, are surprised the day that they’re asked if they’d like to be one. The reason is that the absolute best moderators are the ones who are just going to do what they do, regardless of formal recognition. They see something that needs doing, and they do it.

And THAT is what we look for.

Mika A Epstein (aka Ipstenu)

The transcript of today’s #wordpress-sfd meetup can be read at this link.

#support

WCSF Travel Assistance Application

Since there was a lot of interest in the travel assistance program when I posted last week, I wanted to follow up with the link now that the form is live: http://2014.sf.wordcamp.org/location/travel-assistance/

If you need financial assistance to cover the travel costs to WCSF and want to apply, do so by June 30 (2 weeks from now). We’ll figure out how much we can offer people the following week, and all notifications will be sent out by July 7.

#wcsf2014

Theme Review Update for June 16, 2014

Currently

  • 124 new tickets are waiting for review.
    • 25 tickets are older than 2 weeks
    • 52 tickets are older than 1 week
    • 80 tickets are older than 3 days
  • 54 tickets are assigned to 30 reviewers.
    • 45 tickets are older than 2 weeks
    • 49 tickets are older than 1 week
    • 54 tickets are older than 3 days

In the past 7 days

  • 142 tickets were opened
  • 167 tickets were closed:
    • 137 tickets were made live.
      • 27 new Themes were made live.
      • 110 Theme updates were made live.
      • 18 more were approved but are waiting to be made live.
    • 26 tickets were not-approved.
    • 4 tickets were closed-newer-version-uploaded.

#themes, #trt